Personal Narrative: The Worst Commute To Work

My worst commute to work was when I was in my early 20 's and living in San Diego. I was in college full-time and working part-time at a mall that was about 30 minutes away by car, but took me three times that by bus and trolley. I would sometimes have to walk the two miles from the trolley station to my house, which included walking uphill, downhill, and across two freeway entrances. It was only really bad in the summer in 100-plus degree heat and at night, when the weirdos and drug addicts roamed around like stray dogs in packs. Late one night, when my ride didn 't show up as planned, I had to walk home and was stopped and nearly assaulted by a strange man that was arrested just weeks later for murder. I was only three houses away from mine, a mere fifty feet away from my house, but there was no one outside anywhere and no lights where he was hanging out when I passed by. It was one of my scariest experiences, especially in San Diego. However, aside from that one night, what I went through was …show more content…
Graham 's article "The 21-Mile Walk to Work", Graham details Robertson 's grueling 23 mile commute through some of the most dangerous parts of Detroit, only two miles of which were on sporadic buses. When Robertson 's old Honda gave out, and his job 's wages couldn 't cover a replacement vehicle, Robertson began his 5-day a week trek to a suburb of Detroit, Rochester Hills, where his factory job, but no public transportation was. He would leave work at 1 a.m. and walk four hours back to Detroit, where he had to survive the roughest and most dangerous of it 's neighborhoods, where his boss admitted he was robbed when Robertson gave a more martyred attitude. In winter, he would have to deal with piles of snow and sub-freezing temperatures. Graham explains that this story depicts a perfect example of "policy failures" and "structural economic obstacles." Graham gives four specific failures facing the city of Detroit: transportation, mobility, crime, and